From the testing I did the drop base causes the air to go up then turn down into the carb... it can cause disturbance with the direction changes.. but is it greater or lesser than the small height air cleaner.. I'm sure that at some point its a wash.. but if you can go to a larger diameter that should help so the air has a longer area to make the turn
being in the airflow industry i kinda disagree with Mr P logic. so since the beer frig was empty & with nothing else to do i thought i'd do a lil test to see if he was right. i set up a test with a fan sucking down a piece of 6 inch ducting. i set my airflow meter up so i could get readings from the same location for both tests. only having 2 hands i had to do the test, get the peak value, press the hold button, take my hand off the fan switch which only worked when pressed & then take my photo. as you can see with just a free flow & no shrouding i got 117 ft/min peak reading.
